Journal
CORTEX
Volume 42, Issue 4, Pages 577-590Publisher
ELSEVIER MASSON, CORP OFF
DOI: 10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70396-4
Keywords
Broca's area; sentence complexity; task demands; fMRI
Funding
- NIDCD NIH HHS [DC 02984, R01 DC003681, R01 DC002984, R01 DC002984-02, DC 03681, R01 DC003681-02] Funding Source: Medline
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Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study directly examined an issue that bridges the potential language processing and multi-modal views of the role of Broca's area: the effects of task-demands in language comprehension studies. We presented syntactically simple and complex sentences for auditory comprehension under three different (differentially complex) task-demand conditions: passive listening, probe verification, and theme judgment. Contrary to many language imaging findings, we found that both simple and complex syntactic structures activated left inferior frontal cortex (L-IFC). Critically, we found activation in these frontal regions increased together with increased task-demands. Specifically, tasks that required greater manipulation and comparison of linguistic material recruited L-IFC more strongly; independent of syntactic structure complexity. We argue that much of the presumed syntactic effects previously found in sentence imaging studies of L-IFC may, among other things, reflect the tasks employed in these studies and that L-IFC is a region underlying mnemonic and other integrative functions, on which much languages processing may rely.
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